This week, a crew of intrepid reader-photographers tackled the intersection of Hillcroft Ave. and Harwin Dr. in Sharpstown. What did y’all find there?
It’s Swamplot’s 4th group photo feature. And how did it turn out?
A reader reports that the long-shuttered and fallow former Target store on the northbound 59 feeder just north of Bellaire Blvd. (and across the freeway from the Sharpstown Mall) will finally be used for something productive — though it’s “probably not the kind of use the Greater Sharpstown Management District had in mind.” What’s that?
The new owner, Golden Sharpstown Inc, is reportedly in the process of turning the 160,000 square foot building into the new home of Texas Jasmine, “the leading wholesaler for C-Store Owners.” (That’s Convenience Store, for the uninitiated.) Texas Jasmine is out of space at their old location [at 7800 Harwin near Fondren, pictured above], and does a thriving business supplying gas stations and convenience stores throughout Houston with everything from dill pickles-in-a-bag to pipe tobacco.
Well, who doesn’t need a dill pickle in a bag now and then? How convenient for the convenience-store owners, no?
Sure, says our tipster, but:
Sure, Mary Ellen Carroll is gonna pick up this Sharpstown lot across from Bayland Park and the house on it and rotate the whole thing 180 degrees. Oh, and then there’s gonna be that hydroponic curtain-wall fencing system and the solar and geothermal systems and the wi-fi cloud and the fancy door hardware and the bees and all. Still gotta meet the local deed restrictions.
Video: Douglas Britt
It’s high time for another street-walking adventure from the writing, singing, photographing, and drinking duo of quasi-professional pedestrians John Nova Lomax and David Beebe. Their latest challenge: a 14.5-mile walk along Bissonnet, from Synott Road (just past Dairy Ashford) to Montrose, which brings Lomax to this stirring conclusion on the sidewalk-transforming power of street trees:
By now, I’ve walked damn near the entire lengths of Bellaire, Westheimer, Clinton, Navigation, and Shepherd, and Bissonnet is nicer than all of them, for the simple reason that its sidewalks have far more shade. Westheimer has none between 6 and the Loop, save for a few landscaping fantasias at scattered corporate campuses; there’s none to be had on most of Shepherd unless you duck under a bridge (where you might sit on human turds); sun-baked Bellaire has none from Eldridge central Sharpstown, and the East Side streets are only a little better. Bissonnet, on the other hand, seems like a stroll through Yosemite.
Below the fold: local color.
Looking for a home in an in-town location, but don’t want to miss that exhilarating feeling you get from East Side neighborhoods near the Ship Channel?
Why not start your search near Bayland Park, at the corner of Bissonnet and Hillcroft, just west of Bellaire? It’s outside the Loop, far to the west of Houston’s industrial areas, close to some of some of the city’s most dynamic neighborhoods . . . and recently was rated one of the most consistently smoggy places in Houston.
That’s right: Smog is worse on the West Side.
The data may surprise many Houstonians who associate smog with the chemical refining and industrial byproducts that foul the air in East Harris County.
In fact, the highest ozone readings in the city are routinely captured by monitors located on Houston’s densely populated southwest side. Recent data shows Bayland Park, just west of Bellaire, to be one of Houston’s smoggiest neighborhoods. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Bayland Park monitor, located in the 6400 block of Bissonnet Street, recorded 45 days in the last three years when ozone levels violated public health standards.
During that period, the monitor registered ozone concentrations as high as or greater than those recorded by monitors in the Ship Channel region.
Howzat happen?
University of Texas chemical engineer David Allen analyzed data collected by the Bayland Park monitor in 2006. He and others determined that climate patterns explained the high ozone concentrations on Houston’s west side. Based on computerized modeling of weather patterns, Allen said nearly every incident of excessive ozone levels in Bayland Park that year happened on days characterized by the same weather pattern: hot and sunny, with still air in the morning and light winds from the east blowing in the afternoon.
“The east winds pick up Ship Channel air and carry it all the way into west Houston where it settles over neighborhoods,” Allen said.
That’s the smell of money.
Photo: Harris County Precinct 3
This grand five-or-six-bedroom, five-bath home on four-fifths of an acre near the corner of Bissonnet and Fondren is festooned with stucco palm-tree frescoes and an aggressive porte-cochere, and can be yours for only $347,000. At that price, you can assume that the furnishings are not coming with it. Which is probably a good thing, though much of the decoration appears to be . . . encrusted on the interior.
You simply have to see this one for yourself: Tour the overdecorated interior—before it’s ruined by a new buyer—after the jump.
On today’s knock-down docket: Portions of four businesses and six houses. Read ’em and weep—after the jump.
A cold death for Flamingo Chill on Airline. That and more in our daily list of sunsetted structures, after the jump.
Over at Houstoned, professional barfly John Nova Lomax and crooner David Beebe take a long, strange trip down the entire length of Bellaire Blvd.—on foot. Lomax’s conclusion:
If Westheimer is mainly about the fetishes, broken dreams and vanities of Anglo whites, and Shepherd is all about the needs of cars, Bellaire is a world market of a street, a bazaar where Mexicans, Anglos, Salvadorans, African Americans, Hondurans, stoners, Vietnamese, Chinese, Koreans and Thais go to shop and eat.
The report from western Chinatown:
Tall bank buildings are sprouting, with glass fronts festooned in Mandarin. Strip malls fill with Vietnamese crawfish joints, Shaolin Temples, and acupuncture clinics. As we crossed Brays Bayou, a huge temple loomed in the distance, and it didn’t take much imagining to pretend you were gazing across a rice paddy toward a Vietnamese village. A Zen center abuts one of the last businesses in town to carry the all-but-forgotten A.J. Foyt’s once-omnipresent name. A couple of ratty old apartment complexes have changed into commercial buildings, each unit housing its own business.
The rice paddies, of course, have left the neighborhood.
More highlights of their journey, as they walk east: live turtles in the water gardens outside the Hong Kong City Mall; front-yard car lots in Sharpstown; Jane Long Middle Schoolers rushing convenience stores; the “Gulfton Ghetto.” Plus, this illuminating report from Alief:
Alief Ozelda Magee, the town’s namesake, is buried right there, under a slate-gray monument with a touching epitaph: “She did what she could.” And hell, maybe she still is. The adjoining apartment complex, which is rumored to cover some of the graves here, is said to suffer from a poltergeist infestation.
Photo: Cruising down Bellaire, by flickr user corazón girl
From heightslife (The Heights Life): RT @swamplot: Going Attractions: Hollywood Video Gives Up on the Tower Theatre http://twurl.nl/ly5csn
From GTello (Gus Tello): @Lennar Houston Real Estate Market Doing Much, Much Better Than Last October http://twurl.nl/t6uo7b (RT @HoustonPress @swamplot)
From HoustonPress (Houston Press): RT @swamplot: Houston Real Estate Market Doing Much, Much Better Than Last October http://twurl.nl/t6uo7b
From isthishouston (isthishouston): RT @swamplot: How’s That Corner of Harrisburg and Wayside Looking? http://snipurl.com/tay31From isthishouston (isthishouston): isthishouston Harrisburg & Wayside - http://isthishouston.com/2009/11/19/harrisburg-wayside/ - #houston @swamplot #eastend
From jenxer (Jennifer Mathis): I can hear it now: "Obsess much, Jen?" RT @swamplot: Comment of the Day: Demo Addicts http://twurl.nl/yf4twm
From kniemeier (Karen Niemeier): Attention East Enders! RT @swamplot How’s That Corner of Harrisburg and Wayside Looking? http://snipurl.com/tay31From jenxer (Jennifer Mathis): I need to quit reading @Swamplot's demolition reports. Seriously. This one breaks my heart. http://is.gd/4YfUZ
From TheLoopScoop (TheLoopScoop): Wow! Hope this works out! RT @GunsandTacos: RT: @swamplot: The Block Party’s Over http://twurl.nl/nxk320
From GunsandTacos (Jay): RT: @swamplot: The Block Party’s Over http://twurl.nl/nxk320